


feelin' about that something old

by OpheliaMarina



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Femslash February, Post-Gotham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 09:24:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3322262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpheliaMarina/pseuds/OpheliaMarina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The nights are quiet in Gotham, and especially quiet in Selina Kyle's apartment, where a beat-up blonde isn't getting the help she came for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	feelin' about that something old

It's dark in Gotham City, but it's always dark in Gotham City. Selina only knows it's nighttime because of the double moon- one hanging slim and white, the other fat and yellow and outlined with the shape of a bat, the surest herald of the day's end. 

It's not a night for her, though- sure, she had a job, but not a high-end one, not an interesting one. By the time she heads back to her apartment, it's just barely one in the morning, and she might actually be able to sleep with the moon in the sky tonight. 

Then she flicks on the cruddy lamp at the end table, illuminating the beat-up blonde on her couch, and her hopes are dashed. 

Harley has the blackest cat Selina owns in her lap, and is stroking its fur absently. Once the light comes on, she grins up at Selina with painted lips, her cheeks thin in the yellowish light. "Hey, kitten." 

"How did you find me here?" is Selina's first question, because dammit, she thought she was properly hidden from the Joker this time. This is her third apartment in five months. 

Harley keeps stroking the cat with her left hand. The right sits limp by her side, folded funny against the fabric of the couch. "The cat smell. And Mr. Whiskers let me in through the window, didn't you Mr. Whiskers?"

"His name is Lombardo," Selina says reluctantly, plucking the cat out of Harley's lap and immediately feeling childish. Harley's hand hovers in the air above where the cat has been, as though uncertain what to do without its presence. 

Then she shrugs with one shoulder "His full name is Mr. Lombardo Whiskers, then. What, you name him after your dad or something?" 

Selina sets Lombardo down on the floor, and he slinks away, purring disappointedly. "What do you want, Harley? Have you got a message for me?" 

"Honestly, you're such a stiff!" Harley says, leaning farther back against the couch, crossing her legs and closing her eyes. "Ain't it appropriate for a girl to come visit an old friend without having to pass notes from a boy? 'Course, that reminds me of a good story from-"

"Harley." 

The story pauses in Harley's mouth, then she opens her eyes and leans forward again. "Mister J don't know I'm here. He'd be mad if he found out, so let's keep this one between us girls, kay?" 

"Fuck, Harley, the last thing I wanna be is on the Joker's bad side." 

Harley just snorts, and closes her eyes. "Oh, kitten. Maybe you should stop playing mouse with the Bats if that's how you really feel."

She's been out all day, and now her legs are getting tired from standing. Selina sits down on the couch, as far to the edge as she possibly can. Harley doesn't so much as twitch. "Tell me why you're here."

Her eyes don't open. "My shoulder's dislocated."

Selina waits, but that seems to be the end of the story. "And?"

"And, I messed up big time today," Harley says. "Dropped a vial of some kinda new drug puddin' wants mass-produced, right? I mean, it was my fault, it wasn't like he- anyway. He's told everyone I gotta fix it myself, so they won't help me, but I just- can't. And I'm not any use to Mister J with a bum chopper. So I need a pal to pop it back inta place." 

So that explains the limp right arm. Not to mention the weak attempts at jokes- the girl's in pain. 

Not that Selina has time for this crap. She's not Joker's lackey or anything, and she really, really hates him, but it's not like she wants to piss him off. "Well, if you needed a pal, why didn't you call up Ivy?" 

"She's busy."

"Doing what? Cultivating a new kind of daisy?"

Harley rolls her left shoulder, and winces. "Tangled up. With Play-Doh and Iceman." 

"Christ," Selina mutters, and runs both of her hands through her hair, trying to hold the oncoming headache back. "Some of us never learn, do we."

Of course Harley's never gonna admit it, but Selina likes to imagine her head inclines, just a bit. Then she says, "So? You gonna do a girl a favor, or what?" 

The girl's already here. It'd just be mean to leave her hanging (heh, Harley'd like that one) when it'd be just as easy to fix her. Selina's catty, but she's not mean. Still, she folds her arms. "I don't want the Joker to know I'm here, Harley. Or that I'm defying his orders. And I don't wanna be hearing from anybody else, either. This is my place, got it?"

"Yeah, yeah, you're a sexy loner in a gross mancave with like eighty grandma-type cats. Get over here and put my arm back in." 

So Selina settles behind Harley on the couch, and the girl leans over obligingly. She knows how this is done. 

Twisting her arm back, which doesn't get her much of a response other than a hiss, Selina says, "Count of three, all right?"

They both know it won't reach three, but Harley says, "One."

"Two," Selina says, and pops the arm back into place. As Harley grunts, she says, "Harley, you know that he'll do worse to you than this if he finds out you fixed it." 

But in holding her arm like this, Selina can still feel more- a tear beneath her fingers, warmth spreading beneath her palm. She doesn't let go "Hold on. This isn't all there is, is it?"

"All that needed fixin'," Harley says briskly, and pulls her arm out of Selina's grasp, wiggling over on the couch so they're side-by-side again. "Thanks, darlin, but I got some appointments to keep." 

"Harley," Selina says, in a voice that sounds worryingly like a reprimanding mother. "Take off your shirt, right now." 

She gets a cheeky grin in response. "Come on, kitten. You know you have to buy me dinner first." 

"Do it." 

"Or what?" Harley grouses, but she's tugging off her jacket already anyway. "You'll call your big bad Bat boyfriend on me?" 

The jacket comes off, then the overshirt, revealing beneath a black bodice layered against pale skin, laced up and probably bulletproof. Just north of it are a myriad of horrifying cuts and bruises, some too deep for Selina to even look at directly. 

Immediately, she gets on her feet. "Stay here. I'm cleaning you up."

"Lina, I gotta get back," Harley says, looking up at her imploringly. "Mister J's expecting me." 

Seriously doubtful. Selina just looks at her. "Harley, no matter when you go back, you know he'll beat the shit out of you-"

"That ain't true-"

"-so let me at least make you a drink before you go, all right? I'll make that Christmas thing you used to like when we were kids." 

The Christmas drink is an ace Selina hasn't played in years, and even in the terrible light she can see Harley's face light up. As a weak protest, she counters, "It's only October." 

"Then it's for last Christmas," Selina says. "I'm making one for me, but if you don't want one-"

Even if she can take a man's head off from three hundred feet away with nothing but a syringe, Harleen Quinzel is a puppy and Selina knows it. She wilts on the couch, and leans back. "All right, but just one. I don't wanna get in any more trouble." 

Selina comes back five minutes later with a full tray. Two steaming mugs of hot cocoa full of peppermint schnapps, with twelve marshmallows in Harley's for each year they've known each other, sit next to stacks of towels, a flask of alcohol, ice, and thread. She finds Harley still on the couch, decked and glittering with the contents of tonight's work. 

She's admiring the shine of a diamond ring in the lamplight when Selina sets the tray down on the coffee table. "Put that back, it's mine."

"As if," Harley scoffs, but unclips the earrings, uncoils the necklaces, unhooks the bracelets, drops it all back into the bag. "Pretty nice haul, Lina. You've been workin- ooh, this for me?"

She scoops up a drink of the tray, and is lifting it to her mouth when Selina presses ice to one of her bruises. With a hiss, she flinches, and a bit of the liquid spills onto her hand. "Jeez! Warn a girl!"

"This is real bad, Har," Selina murmurs, rubbing the ice on a towel to dampen it. "Shit. I'm taking all this shit on your face off, all right?" 

Harley just makes a sound in her throat that indicates assent, and Selina starts scrubbing the paint off her skin. "So tell me. What's the worst the Bat's ever done to you?"

Easy to remember- broken leg, three years ago now. He swears it was an accident, that he didn't know it was her on that landing, but sometimes she wonders if it would've mattered to him if he did know. Sometimes she wonders if he's just lying. If she's just lying to herself.

But she's gotta pretend to be better than that, so now she lies to Harley too. "A hickey. Damn, what's in this stuff?"

Wiped free of the makeup, Harley looks washed out, and somehow younger. Her eyes are sunken deep into her cheekbones, and her hair has fallen out of its pigtails to hang limply against her drawn face. For a flash of a second, Selina can remember the exact way Harley had looked when she left for college, fresh-faced and beautiful, waving and beaming as the train sped towards Metropolis. Then the memory's gone.

The removal of the paint reveals a split lip, a black eye, and a swelling cheek. All Selina can do is moan, quietly. "Harley, you've got to leave him."

There's silence for a while, and during it Selina stitches up the more gaping of Harley's wounds, and applies ice to the uncut ones. Then Harley mutters, "You don't get it." 

"Yeah, yeah, I know, you love him."

"It ain't even just that," she says, and that startles Selina, because for Harley it's always love, love, doing everything for love. If that's not it, then what? "You wanna get outta this business, you could. You wanna get outta the city, the country, you could! You got the cash, you got the connections. You got the goddamn Bat on your side. What do I got? Nothin. I got Mister J and a list of crimes bout as high as those Louboutins in your closet. He's all that protects me, Lina. I can't leave him." 

The worst part is Selina knows she's right. Out of all three of them- her and Ivy and Harley, back in the good old days- Harley was always the smartest. "You've got friends, Harley. That's something." 

Harley just snorts. "Yeah, great. The plant girl and the cat lady. Poison Ivy, who keeps fucking around with the weirdest creeps on the block, and Catwoman, who can't even give me the fucking time of day unless I'm bleeding out. Great. Connections." 

"Look, Harley, it's not as if I wanted it this way either, all right?" Selina snaps, pouring rubbing alcohol all across her clavicles. Harley yelps. "It's not my fault you're shacking up with the biggest psychopath in history, or that Ivy's on five different types of weed. I want us three to still be friends, okay? But I gotta watch out for number one, and your people could give less than two shits about me or Ivy, or you. So don't give me this crap."

Harley's pouting, her head turned away. Selina looks back down, straddles her legs, and presses a towel against her pale, bleeding lips. "Listen. I'm the only person who's taking care of you. Me and Ivy are the only ones who even care about you, and I keep trying to tell you that but you don't listen." 

Her mouth's covered, so she can't protest, but Harley glares at the wall as if it's her next victim. But when the towel comes away, her gaze has softened again, and she looks up at Selina. "How come you have all this stuff?"

Selina shifts on her hips, just slightly, settling more comfortably into Harley's lap. "First aid? It's probably a good idea when you're on the wrong side of the law, Har." 

"It ain't just that," Harley says. "This's a lot. And I didn't know you could do stitches."

A little uncomfortable, Selina tapes up the cut on Harley's neck. "Found some of those old textbooks of yours, actually."

"This is for the Bat," Harley murmurs. "You take care of him sometimes, too, don't cha? He comes around here."

Selina doesn't answer. 

Harley just hums. "Huh. Never would've thought you'd be the type to really be in love, kitty."

"I'm not, you shut your trap."

That makes her laugh, and while Selina's never really liked her high-pitched cackle that usually precedes a murder, she does like Harley's real laugh. It's a sweet, bubbly sound that reminds her of being a kid, reminds her of sometimes being happy. "Touchy. Hey, tell me. D'you know who he really is?"

Bruce Wayne. She's known for a year and a half now. He didn't tell her- she figured it out on her own. It pissed him off, but what's he going to do about it? Chain her to the fence? "As if I'll tell you that."

"Hmm," Harley murmurs knowingly. "You know what Mister J says? He says that the Bat is the real guy, and whoever he hides behind in day time is the real mask." 

That's true. It's so true it makes Selina's heart ache. "That's pretty deep for a guy who worships whoopee cushions." 

Harley ignores her. "See, I think that's it for him," she murmurs. "I think Mister J's right, and you know what else? I think the Bat's lucky. At least he has a choice in who he gets to be today. Mask or man. You and me, we don't, do we? You got the cat ears and I got the paint, but everyone knows it's us beneath it. We don't get to hide."

The Joker doesn't have a secret identity, Selina's sure of it- no guy that off the walls can fake being someone normal for more than a minute at a time. She and Harley can pretend at having two lives, but Harley's right- Catwoman and Miss Kyle are one in the same, and every crime boss and superman knows it. Harley has the barest minimum of even an alias- just a shortened version of a name everyone already knows. "Maybe it's for the best. Two personalities is a pain, it's better not to have to hide."

"Maybe," Harley whispers. "But, sometimes I think. I wanted to be a doctor. And I coulda been one, if I had two of me going around like the Bat does. I coulda at least pretended to be the girl I used to be, but now she's all the way gone." 

And the thing is, Selina has always wondered if that's true. Harley Quinn is a loud, bright, painful caricature of Harleen Quinzel, Selina's old best friend- a teenager who liked bad knock-knock jokes and big books, who was passionate enough to shake up a storm. 

Then again, the old Selina Kyle was a cocky upstart who was naïve enough to believe her mom was coming back. She tugs Harley's jacket back around her, and the girl looks up. "Well, Har, maybe the the old us is gone, but we're still here. We can't moan and groan about yesterday when we've already made our choices. There's no going back."

Harley's mug is empty, and she's all bandaged and stitched up now. She keeps still though, and looking up at Selina, who's remained in her lap, her hands resting on the shoulders where she pulled up Harley's jacket. Harley's eyes are bright and moony in the Bat-light. 

For a tentative moment Selina thinks something might actually happen, and there's such quiet movement that both of them barely notice it. Then their noses brush, and Selina reminds herself again- there's no going back. 

She climbs out of Harley's lap, lifting the tray off the coffee table in the same fluid movement, and behind her Harley gives a hollow laugh and slowly stands up, rolling both her shoulders this time. "Okay," she says, in response to nothing in particular.

When Selina returns from the kitchen, Harley's in the doorway, overshirt folded over one arm, waiting. "I gotta go," she says. 

"Okay," Selina says, and they both stand there, waiting. "Take care of yourself, Harley."

Harley hesitates. Then her arms drop to her sides, and she gives Selina a half-smile. "Give me a kiss at least. For auld lang syne." 

But auld lang syne maybe isn't what Selina wants to risk her life for. The Joker may be a sociopath who'd rather hit Harley than hit on her, but Selina would probably still end up on the chopping block for laying lips on his girl. 

"Whatsa matter?" Harley says, arms folded again, and her voice is light but there's something sharp-edged beneath it. "Worried your batfriend's watching?"

Fuck it, Selina decides. "He's always watching," she says, takes two strides forward, and kisses Harley on the mouth. 

It's been a long, long time. They're both taller and leaner now, but Harley still tastes sweet and she still giggles when Selina kisses her, and wraps her arms around her neck. Cautiously, Selina rests her hands against her hips, not wanting to close her eyes but feeling them flutter closed anyway. 

And for a moment, it all comes rushing back- being twelve and gathered together on the gravel with a shivering Ivy between them, a threadbare blanket just barely covering their interconnected hands. Harley's head in her lap, moaning about the heat. The sharp realization that they couldn't share clothes anymore, the warmth of Harley leaning over her shoulder suddenly feeling awkward and indecent. Harley whispering in her ear that Ivy had kissed her on the mouth yesterday, and does that mean she like-likes me or was it goofing around? Having hands clench in her lap. Harley kissing her on the mouth, telling her she likes her, likes her. Waving off the pretty girl in Gotham Station, whose huge grin shines in the sun as the train winked goodbye. 

Harley coming home to Selina telling her it can't be like it was anymore. Selina hearing Harley whisper over the phone that she got that job at Arkham, she's really excited and please would Selina tell Ivy, Harley can't get in touch with her.

The next time, seeing her spray-painted white and black and red, eyes bloodshot and cackling, and all Selina could do was hang back in the shadows and watch. 

Then it's gone. It's all gone. There's no going back.

Harley kisses her just once more, on the nose. "Don't worry about this place," she whispers. "I got Mister J tailing that Lois Lane wannabe- Vicki Vale?- as Batbrain's sweetheart. I got your back, honey."

Then she slips out the door, leaving only a resounding slam behind her.

It's three in the morning now. Selina only gets two and a half hours of sleep. 

Tomorrow night, when she runs into the Batman, he tells her the Joker's on a fresh killing spree- blondes who match the same body and age type of Harley Quinn. The real one's nowhere to be found. 

When he asks if she knows anything about this, she says, "Nothing. Guy's a whacko. Good for her if she's finally getting away."

But he doesn't believe her. He never will.

**Author's Note:**

> First foray into both Batman fic and Femslash February, and both very worthwhile! Did you know that there are only four Selina/Harley fics on this website? An absolute travesty. 
> 
> While Gotham is a bad show that I'm constantly guilty of, I do enjoy the idea of the Sirens trio together as kids growing up. A prequel to this fic, probably set more concretely in the Gotham universe, will be coming soon.


End file.
